SWIF

CLXXXVIII

TO THE NIGHT

WIFTLY walk over the western wave,
Spirit of Night!

Out of the misty eastern cave

Where all the long and lone daylight
Thou wovest dreams of joy and fear
Which make thee terrible and dear, -
Swift be thy flight!

Wrap thy form in a mantle gray
Star-inwrought!

Blind with thine hair the eyes of day,
Kiss her until she be wearied out,
Then wander o'er city, and sea, and land
Touching all with thine opiate wand-
Come, long-sought!

When I arose and saw the dawn,

I sigh'd for thee;

When light rode high, and the dew was gone,

And noon lay heavy on flower and tree,

And the weary Day turn'd to his rest

Lingering like an unloved guest,
I sigh'd for thee.

Thy brother Death came, and cried
Wouldst thou me?

Thy sweet child Sleep, the filmy-eyed,

Murmur'd like a noon-tide bee

Shall I nestle near thy side?

Wouldst thoù me? — And I replied
No, not thee!

Death will come when thou art dead,
Soon, too soon —

Sleep will come when thou art fled;
Of neither would I ask the boon
I ask of thee, beloved Night-
Swift be thine approaching flight,
Come soon, soon!

P. B. Shelley

CLXXXIX

TO A DISTANT FRIEND

WHY art thou silent! Is thy love a plant

WHY

Of such weak fibre that the treacherous air
Of absence withers what was once so fair?
Is there no debt to pay, no boon to grant?

Yet have my thoughts for thee been vigilant,
Bound to thy service with unceasing care —
The mind's least generous wish a mendicant
For nought but what thy happiness could spare.

Speak! - though this soft warm heart, once free to hold A thousand tender pleasures, thine and mine,

Be left more desolate, more dreary cold

Than a forsaken bird's-nest fill'd with snow 'Mid its own bush of leafless eglantine —

Speak, that my torturing doubts their end may know! W. Wordsworth

15

If I should meet thee

After long years,

How should I greet thee?

With silence and tears.

CXCI

Lord Byron

HAPPY INSENSIBILITY

IN

N a drear-nighted December
Too happy, happy Tree

Thy branches ne'er remember
Their green felicity;

The north cannot undo them
With a sleety whistle through them,

Nor frozen thawings glue them
From budding at the prime.

In a drear-nighted December
Too happy, happy Brook
Thy bubblings ne'er remember
Apollo's summer look;

But with a sweet forgetting
They stay their crystal fretting,

Never, never petting

About the frozen time.

Ah would 't were so with many
A gentle girl and boy!
But were there ever any
Writhed not at passéd joy?
To know the change and feel it,
When there is none to heal it

Nor numbéd sense to steal it

Was never said in rhyme.

7. Keats

CXCII

HERE shall the lover rest

WHE

Whom the fates sever

From his true maiden's breast

Parted for ever?

Where, through groves deep and high

Sounds the far billow,

Where early violets die

Under the willow.

Eleu loro

Soft shall be his pillow.

There, through the summer day
Cool streams are laving:
There, while the tempests sway,

Scarce are boughs waving;
There thy rest shalt thou take,

Parted for ever, Never again to wake

Never, O never!

Eleu loro

Never, O never!

Where shall the traitor rest,

He, the deceiver,

Who could win maiden's breast,

Ruin, and leave her?

In the lost battle,

Borne down by the flying, Where mingles war's rattle

With groans of the dying;

Eleu loro

There shall he be lying.